Kabayan party-list Rep. Ron Salo echoed Friday the call of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) groups for the Senate to resume its deliberations on the proposed Department of Filipinos Overseas (DFO).
"The creation of the Department of OFWs transcends the issue of rightsizing in the government," said Salo, a co-author of House Bill (HB) No.5832, also known as the Act creating the Department Of Filipinos Overseas And Foreign Employment.
"It is an investment into the welfare of our more than 10 million OFWs who brought in $33.5 billion in 2019 alone. This amount allows our country to be economically afloat despite economic downturns," the lawyer-congressman said.
The measure was approved on third and final reading by the House of Representatives last March 11. Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano, the House Speaker at that time, is among the principal authors of the bill.
There are currently nine bills seeking the creation of DFO pending on the committee level in the Senate. However, last Monday, the Senate joint committees on Labor and Employment, Foreign Relations, and Finance opted to defer the hearing on the creation of DFO until after the Senate tackles Senate Bill (SB) No.244 or the Rightsizing the National Government Act.
"The $33.5-billion OFWs remittances alone far outweigh the few billions of pesos that the government will be spending for the operations of the Department being created," Salo said, alluding to the senators' worries on rightsizing as it relates to the proposed DFO.
The core of rightsizing is the downsizing of the bureaucracy for the purpose of efficiency. The sense of the Senate is that creating a new department goes against this notion.
"Viewed from a different lens, its creation (DFO) is in fact rightsizing government bureaucracies in its truest sense as the Department of OFWs simply places all the agencies of the government in charge of OFW welfare and protection under one roof," explained Salo, a former UP law professor.
"This will certainly improve the delivery of government services to our OFWs and optimize meager government resources," he added.
OFW Global Movement Association and Cooperation Inc. (OFW-GMAC) President Lalaine Dazille Siason had earlier asked the Senate not to leave the proposals for the DFO hanging.
"If you consider us modern day heroes, then government should act on what we have long been asking for and presenting to Congress. Now is the right time. We have been waiting for this for a long time. Don’t deprive us of a single office that will be accountable when services to the OFWs become slow," Siason said. The OFW-GMAC has 200 chapters worldwide.
Warpeace Arnold, the current President of the Alliance of United OFWs based in the United Arab Emirates, also appealed for the reopening of the Senate hearings on the DFO.
"I think it is not too much to ask that the services for our OFWs be made more comprehensive and appropriate through the establishment of an agency that will respond to the problems of our fellow Filipinos who are working in other countries," said the Leyte-born OFW leader.
"We cannot understand why the (Senate) committee does not seem to want to discuss the shortcomings of the different agencies that handle our concerns as well as how to improve the programs for overseas workers and those who have been forced to return to the country due to unexpected incidents like the pandemic," Arnold added.